From Organism to Picnic

Abstract

… among all those magnificent horned beasts at the head of which Monsieur le Préfet does us the honour of being seated, him standing at the prow of the splendid herd of the local bovine race, and taking the helm with a clear and watchful eye, while the sails, propelled by the magnificent native draught horse, carry along the straight course of prosperity the man of Champagne, who does not fear its twists and turns … 

 The Prisoner of the Buddha, Franquin, Greg, Jidehem

Notes

Notes

1. In the French text of the article, all translations from the Greek are, with stated exceptions, the author's own. These have in turn been rendered as directly as possible into English to minimize the risk of giving quotations at a double remove from the original. In so far as the author's French versions involve a number of interpretative decisions, and reflect the terms of the surrounding commentary, I have felt it inappropriate to cite standard English editions. The latter are, however, used where the author adheres to an existing French translation. This applies more commonly to passages cited in works by twentieth-century authors, which have been replaced by either the English equivalent or the English original. French titles of Greek texts have been standardized, unless significantly different: for individual works, with the relevant editions of the Loeb Classical Library, and for fragments in DK (= H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1961)), with Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP [1948] 1996). [Translator's note]

2. The Greek phrase is ambiguous, and English translations diverge. Either it is the poets who have been credulous, in listening to, and taking inspiration from, stories about Helen, or the credulity exists on the part of those who have listened to the poets. The French syntax is stretched in order, it would appear, to accommodate this difficulty, leaning towards the former interpretation but marginally preserving the possibility of the latter. [Translator's note]

3. I develop this point in “Consensus et création des valeurs. Qu’est-ce qu’un éloge?” in Les Grecs, les Romains et nous (Paris: Le Monde-Editions, 1991), and, more recently, in L’Effet sophistique (Paris: Gallimard, 1995) 195–206, and in Voir Hélène en toute femme (Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2000). By contrast, on the danger of interfering with common sense (in every sense of the term) through the “sorceries of negation,” from the Treaty on Non-Being by Gorgias to “negationists” like M. Roques, see the article by Patrice Loraux, “Consentir,” Le genre humain, Le consensus, nouvel opium (Nov. 1990): 151–71 – but any analysis of our divergences would deserve more than just a note.

4. From now on, it is necessary to quote from the edition by Fernanda Decleva-Caizzi and Guido Bastianini, the only one to take account of recently discovered fragments: Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, I, 1 (Florence, 1989) 176–236. The fragment that I am interpreting here, fragment B (POxy 1364 and 3647), corresponds to fragment A of the Vorsokratiker (87B44, DK II 346–52). I put forward a translation of this, with commentary, in “On n’échappe pas à Antiphon,” Rue Descartes, 3 (January 1992): 11–34.

5. 87B44a, DK II 356–66.

6. See, for example, my article “Histoire d’une identité. Les Antiphon,” L’écrit du temps 10, Documents de la mémoire (autumn 1985): 65–77.

7. Hesiod, Theogony, 775–805: when eris and neikos are about, the gods take the great oath to find out who is lying (hos tis pseudetai). The one who swears falsely on the water of the Styx remains “without breath or voice” a great year long, and then for a period of nine years takes no part either in the council or in the banquets of the gods.

Socrates goes on to examine in the following part of the text the “unwritten laws,” those which are everywhere the same, and which, since men do not all assemble together nor “speak the same language,” can only have been established by the gods (19).. Let us note the strict equivalence of these to “nature” in Antiphon: they are in fact characterized as that “lawfulness” from which there is no escape, and which includes within itself the punishment for its transgression; thus, when Hippias asks: “What trouble is incurred when one commits incest?” Socrates replies “one begets badly.” (22–25)

8. The line is all the more difficult for the textual problem that it poses: hê homonoia […] sunagôgên homoiou tou nou (homoiou Halm, ho monou cod.) koinônian te kai henôsin en heautêi suneilêphen.

9. The French quotation is taken from an expression of Callicles, following the translation of Alfred Croiset, with Louis Bodin, of Plato's Gorgias (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1955): “mais ce qui fait l’agrément de la vie, c’est de verser le plus possible” (494b). In the translation of W.R.M. Lamb (Loeb, [1925] 1991), the line reads: “But a pleasant life consists rather in the largest possible inflow.” But this, and other English versions, do not allow the dual application of the phrase that is possible in the French. The verb “verser,” the literal act of pouring, extends to financial payment, and so here, by opposition, to the situation of the miser. [Translator's note]

10. Cf., for example, E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and The Irrational (Berkeley: U of California P, 1951) ch. 1, or P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, s.v. aidomai. For details of a rhetorical as opposed to an ethical analysis of the myth of Protagoras, from Aelius Aristides through to modernity, one can refer to Philosophie 28 “Rhétorique et politique. Les métamorphoses de Protagoras” (autumn 1990).

11. The English title of this work is perhaps better known, in the 1973 Loeb translation of C.A. Behr, as To Plato: In Defence of Oratory. The French title used by Cassin, Contre Platon sur la rhétorique, has been rendered here in conformity with her reference to Hermes as the bringer of “la rhétorique,” which by the same token is given in Behr's version as “oratory.” [Translator's note]

12. Auguste Diès, Introduction to Platon, Oeuvres complètes, VI, La République, I–III, ed. and trans. Emile Chambry (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1932) xii.

13. Here is the Greek phrase in its entirely: tautên tên homonoian sôphrosunên einai, cheironos te kai ameinonos kata phusin xumphônian hopoteron dei archein kai en polei kai en heni hekastôi (432a). The term homonoia is sometimes replaced by homodoxia, the identity of opinion between the rulers and the ruled for the better part to rule (433c, 442d).

14. Cf. for example 433b, d, 441e: to ta hautou prattein […] to hautou hekastos heis ôn epratten kai ouk epolupragmonei.

15. LSJ = Liddell, H.G., and R. Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, rev. H.S. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). [Editor's note]

16. Here is the Greek: hôsper kan ei tis tên sumphônian poiêseien homophônian ê ton rhuthmon basin mian (II, 1263b34–35).

17. This is to say that it does not strike me as necessary, indeed quite the contrary, to attach two different meanings to plêthos: good “plurality,” and perhaps “majority,” when it is a question of the city, and, by opposition, bad “mass,” when it is a question of democratic deviation. The use of plêthos up to Chapter 11 constantly gives the lie to this opposition, as plêthos, in contrast with oligoi, is the equivalent of hoi polloi (1281a40, 42, b8, 11), and Aristotle questions whether it is “every plêthos” or just “a determinate plêthos” that is likely to behave as a good mixture (b15–21).

18. The lines immediately following on from this pose a double problem.

For all that (alla), it is in this way that those men who are politically virtuous differ from each one of those who make up the plurality, just as it is said that those who are not beautiful differ from those who are beautiful, and the objects painted by an artist from real objects: they differ through the gathering up of distinct and separate traits into a unity, for in any case, taken separately, it is the eye of such and such a person, found in the painted object, and some other part of someone else, that has the greatest beauty (epei kechôrismenôn ge kallion echein tou gegrammenou toudi men ton ophthalmon, heterou de tinos heteron morion, 1281b13–15).

The first problem concerns the way in which the value of the crowd connects with that of politically virtuous individuals. The argument needs to be situated in its context: is it better to give power to the mass or to a small number of excellent men – democracy or aristocracy? (1281a39–41). The alla brings the argument of the aristocrats into alignment with that of the democrats: the crowd holds on to what is best in those who make it up, just as the virtuous in politics bring together the disparate qualities to be found in them individually. The second problem is that of the relation between the painted object and the plurality of its models. Tricot translates as follows:

les éléments disséminés çà et là ont été réunis sur une seule tête, puisque, considérés du moins à part, l’œil d’une personne en chair et en os, ou quelque autre organe d’une autre personne, sont plus beaux que l’œil ou l’organe dessinné [“the elements scattered here and there have been reunited in a single head, for considered apart at least, the eye of a person who is of flesh and bone, or some other organ of some other person, is more beautiful than the eye or organ painted”]

The part that serves as the model is in this instance superior to the resulting part: which is to say that something gets lost in the process of gathering up, and therefore that the qualities of the crowd or of the virtuous man are inferior to the qualities, taken one by one, in individuals. But it is the opposite that needs to be brought out: on each occasion, the gathering up only gathers what is best, in the crowd, in the virtuous man, or in the painting. For Plato, the part does not have to be optimal; it is even the case that in itself it must not be, in order for the whole to be so. For Aristotle, the whole retains only the optimum: moreover, as his notes ad loc. testify, Tricot lapses here into Platonism. The area of contention is sharply defined: it concerns the function of tou gegrammenou, 14. If this is the complement of the comparative, kallion, then the eye of the model is indeed “more beautiful than the eye painted.” If it is a subjective genitive, then the eye of so and so has been chosen for its beauty, and reproduced in the painting. Let us acknowledge that the construction put forward by Tricot is the one that most immediately comes to mind.

19. The image is again taken up in 3.16, 1287b25–31, in relation to the benefit of having several magistrates:

For each magistrate judges well when he has been well trained by the law, and it is doubtless absurd that someone should see with two eyes, judge with two ears, or act with two hands and feet better than many would with many. In actual fact, monarchs make many eyes for themselves, many ears, hands and feet: they bring into positions of power those who are friendly towards their power and towards their person.

It would be interesting to pose the question as to how this image of a body with a plethora of organs becomes that of tyranny.

20. I will leave aside the argument that follows on from this in Aristotle, according to which the user (of a house, of a helm), and even the consumer (of a meal), is a better judge of the quality of the product than the producer himself, and refer the reader to the article by Pierre Aubenque, “Aristotle and democracy,” in Individu et société. L’influence d’Aristote dans le monde méditerranén, Proceedings of the Conference of Istanbul, 5–9 January 1986 (Istanbul–Paris–Rome–Trieste: Editions Isis, 1988), in particular, 36. It only remains to be noted that the argument makes of the city a fabricated object and an object of use – which might perhaps save a certain number of misinterpretations of the famous phusei (1.1, 1253a2).

21. We only find homonoêtikon in the critique of the Republic: if all say together “it's mine,” this does not produce concord (2.3, 1261b32). Then – and we will come back to this – homonoousa, in 5.6, 1306a9, to describe an oligarchy that is hard to bring down from within.

22. Houtoi gar kai heautois homonoousi kai allêlois (1167b5–6); cf. 9.4, where, as in the testimony of Iamblichus, the homonoia/stasis opposition serves to describe the individual, and, in this instance, to differentiate between the epieikeis and the phauloi (homognômonei, 1166a13; stasiazei, 1166b19).

23. Plutarch, Concerning Chattering 511b (context in: Heraclitus, B 125 DK), cited, with flawless commentary, by Nicole Loraux, whose terms I take up here, in “Le lien de la division,” Le Cahier du Collège International de Philosophie 4 (Dec. 1987), in particular 111–12. But it is with the whole article that I am in grateful homonoia.

24. I will allow myself here to refer the reader to my article “Logos et politique. Politique, rhétorique et sophistique chez Aristote,” in Aristote politique. Etudes sur la Politique d’Aristote (Paris: PUF, 1993) 367–98.

25. Here, I am exploiting, in the light of the two models of consensus, certain arguments better backed up in my “Grecs et Romains. Les Paradigmes de l’Antiquité chez Arendt et Heidegger,” in Ontologie et politique. Hannah Arendt (Paris: Tierce, 1989).

26. Cassin's footnote, here, gives in its context the French translation of Mazon (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1955). The corresponding translation of Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Loeb, 1994) reads:

Many things are formidable, and none more formidable than man […] Skilful beyond hope is the contrivance of his art, and he advances sometimes to evil, at other times to good. When he applies the laws of the earth and the justice the gods have sworn to uphold he is high in the city; outcast from the city is he with whom the ignoble consorts for the sake of gain.

The excerpt given in the main body of the text, “haut dans la cité – hors de la cité,” is Cassin's own translation, and has been rendered into English accordingly. [Translator's note]

27. 1935; trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale UP, [1959] 1987) 152.

28. M. Heidegger, Parmenides (Wintersemester 1942/43), Gesamtausgabe 54 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1982) 133–42.

29. The English translation of the interview bears a different title: “Only a God Can Save Us”: Der Spiegel's Interview with Martin Heidegger, trans. Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo, The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Wollin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) 104; translation first published in Philosophy Today 20 (April, 1976): 267–85. This English title is a quotation from the text of the interview (following the German: “Nur ein Gott kann uns noch retten,” Der Spiegel, 31 May 1976). Cassin's reference is to the more generically titled Réponses et questions sur l’histoire et la politique, trans. Jean Launay (Paris: Mercure de France, 1988) 42. [Translator's note]

30. “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays, ed. Michael Murray (New Haven: Yale UP, 1978) 303. [French translation by Barbara Cassin and Patrick Lévy, Vies Politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1974) 320.]

31. H. Arendt, “What is Freedom?” in her Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (London: Penguin, 1993) 157.

32. H. Arendt, in The Human Condition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, [1958] 1998) e.g., 198, is here taking up an expression from the Nicomachean Ethics (4.12, 1126b11 f.) which in Aristotle serves to define not the city, nor sociability, but “affability,” indeed even “servility,” the opposite flaw to that of “ill humour” or “pettifoggery,” but just as far removed from the medial virtue, a certain sort of friendship. The pejorative connotation is erased by Arendt in favour of a political interpretation of the term “suzên,” “living together,” which appears throughout the Politics. I would wish to interpret this infidelity, or inaccuracy, as a consequence of the independence of the political in relation to the ethical.

33. J. Taminiaux, “Heidegger et Arendt lecteurs d’Aristote,” Les Cahiers de Philosophie 4 “Hannah Arendt. Confrontations” (autumn 1987): 41–52.

34. H. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57.1 (Spring, 1990): Philosophy and Politics II (quotations taken from 84–85); compare with “The Concept of History,” in her Between Past and Future, 51.

35. H. Arendt, The Human Condition 3.

36. Ibid. 26–27. In this particular text, Arendt's own English version of the Aristotelian definition of man is “a living being capable of speech.” [Translator's note]

37. H. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics” 90.

38. I have been unable to trace this citation, and have rendered it from the French (“courtise le consentement de l’autre”). [Translator's note]

39. H. Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in her Between Past and Future 259.